The S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:
Shadow of Chernobyl Website now offers the official announcement for
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, the just-revealed (story) shooter
follow-up. The announcement includes four screenshots from the project, and
a teaser website is
online, offering a Flash presentation for the project, which is indeed a
prequel to the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Here's word:

GSC Game World
announces S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky for PC, the official prequel to the most
atmospheric game of 2007 – Survival FPS S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

The story of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky brings the players one year prior to the
events of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game in 2011.

A group of stalkers has for the first time reached the very heart of the Zone –
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and brings about a cataclysm on the brink of a
catastrophe. An immense blowout of anomalous energy changes the Zone. There are
no more reliable and relatively safe roads. The entire levels vanish in the
outbursts of anomalies. Stalkers and even expeditions die or end up sealed on
the lost territories. New areas, which remained unknown since the time of the
Zone emergence, appear on the Zone map. The Zone continues to shake with
blowouts. The Zone is unstable. The anomalous activity is at its maximum.

Changes of the Zone map known to stalkers shake the fragile balance of forces in
the Zone. Among the groupings, there flare up hostilities for the new
territories, artifact fields and spheres of influence. There are no more old
enemies or friends – now everyone is for himself. The Factions War has started
between the groupings.

The protagonist is a mercenary who appeared at the edge of the opposition
between stalker factions, Strelok and even the Zone itself. The main character
will have to play the key role in the events, which led to creation of the Zone
up to the point from which the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game begins.

What’s waiting for stalkers in the opened depths of the Zone? Which new
challenges bear in the new territories? Why blowouts continue shaking the Zone?
Why did the Zone change? How to remove its instability? Which faction will take
the upper hand in the clan opposition? Why did Strelok end up in the death
truck? What happened to Strelok prior to that? Was there any other choice to
make? These and many other questions will get answered in the official prequel
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky.

Experienced stalkers and newbies! Get ready for the new challenges in the
exclusion zone in Q1 2008.

Game features:

• Atmosphere of the Exclusion Zone
• Research of new depths of the Zone – Red Forest, Limansk,
Pripyat Undergrounds and more.
• A-Life-driven War of the Factions
• Possibility to play and lead any faction to victory
• Advanced A-Life system
• Varied behaviour of NPC stalkers in the A-Life world
• Advanced spectacular storyline scenes
• Improved AI of computer-controlled characters
• Skirting around dynamic obstacles by NPCs
• Use of grenades by NPCs
• Fast Travel
• Improved concept of detectors, artifacts and anomalies
• New system of upgrades for weapons and armor
• Weapons and armor repair
• Reworked HUD and PDA
• New version of the game engine - X-Ray 1.5.
• DirectX 10 renderer
• Improved DirectX 9 renderer - parallax bump, soft
particles, depth of field, motion blur, eye adaptation effect.
• Cutting-edge and detailed game graphics (normal map)
• Inverse kinematics
• New animation engine

Armed Assault, aka ArmA: Combat Operations is great if you love Coop and wide-open worlds. I suppose Stalker might be interesting with coop, but I liked it just fine in SP since everything is heavily scripted anyway.

They mention Direct x improvements....is this due to the Float32 mod? the guy making it said they are going to adopt his mod in the next official stalker patch.

Maybe they hired him. They should, since before his mod I couldn't even get a decent frame rate on the lowest settings, but now (with his mod) I get a steady 60fps with everything ramped up. Really amazing skills that man has.

Or do I have to buy the expansion pack to make the original work correctly?

Hopefully their work on a new expansion will result in some good patches coming out for the main game. The new features can go into the expansion. Then everybody wins. And by everybody I mean everybody who waits to buy games well after the launch day. Or is that just me?